ShadowNeuS: Neural SDF Reconstruction by Shadow Ray Supervision

By supervising camera rays between a scene and multi-view image planes, NeRF reconstructs a neural scene representation for the task of novel view synthesis. On the other hand, shadow rays between the light source and the scene have yet to be considered. Therefore, we propose a novel shadow ray supervision scheme that optimizes both the samples along the ray and the ray location. By supervising shadow rays, we successfully reconstruct a neural SDF of the scene from single-view pure shadow or RGB images under multiple lighting conditions. Given single-view binary shadows, we train a neural network to reconstruct a complete scene not limited by the camera's line of sight. By further modeling the correlation between the image colors and the shadow rays, our technique can also be effectively extended to RGB inputs. We compare our method with previous works on challenging tasks of shape reconstruction from single-view binary shadow or RGB images and observe significant improvements. The code and data will be released.Comment: Project page: https://gerwang.github.io/shadowneus

Structure-aware Editable Morphable Model for 3D Facial Detail Animation and Manipulation

Morphable models are essential for the statistical modeling of 3D faces. Previous works on morphable models mostly focus on large-scale facial geometry but ignore facial details. This paper augments morphable models in representing facial details by learning a Structure-aware Editable Morphable Model (SEMM). SEMM introduces a detail structure representation based on the distance field of wrinkle lines, jointly modeled with detail displacements to establish better correspondences and enable intuitive manipulation of wrinkle structure. Besides, SEMM introduces two transformation modules to translate expression blendshape weights and age values into changes in latent space, allowing effective semantic detail editing while maintaining identity. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed model compactly represents facial details, outperforms previous methods in expression animation qualitatively and quantitatively, and achieves effective age editing and wrinkle line editing of facial details. Code and model are available at https://github.com/gerwang/facial-detail-manipulation.Comment: ECCV 202

Molecular and serological analysis of the D variant in the Chinese population and identification of seven novel RHD alleles

Abstract Background The molecular basis of the D variant phenotype in the Chinese differs greatly from that of the Caucasian. Adapting a specific D typing strategy to the spectrum of prevalent RHD variant alleles is necessary. Study Design and Methods Blood samples with ambiguous D phenotypes were collected in the Southern Chinese population. A special three‐step typing strategy was applied. First, the common DVI type 3 was identified from epitope profiles of D antigen. Then, another common weak D type 15 ( RHD*845A ) was identified by epitope profiles of D antigen and Sanger sequencing of RHD exon 6. Finally, the remaining D variants were genotyped mainly by Sanger sequencing. For the novel RHD alleles in the coding region and exon–intron junction, in vitro transfection and minigene splicing assays were performed, respectively. The anti‐D investigation was performed. Results DVI type 3 (65/253, 25.7%) and weak D type 15 (62/253, 24.5%) were common Chinese D variants, and RHD*960A , DFR , RHD*weak D type 25 , 72 , and 136 were frequent variant RHD alleles. Besides, twenty‐two sporadic and seven novel RHD alleles ( RHD*188A ; RHD*688C ; RHD*782 T ; RHD*1181C ; RHD*165 T, 993A ; RHD*148 + 3G > T and RHD*1227 + 5G > C ) were identified. The deleterious effect of the novel RHD alleles on D antigen or mRNA expression was confirmed. Anti‐D was detected in two DVI type 3 pregnant women. Discussion The three‐step typing strategy provides an effective approach for Chinese D variant typing. It can be anticipated that commercially available RHD genotyping kits have limitations for testing Chinese D variants, as some of the frequent variants are not interrogated

Calcium-Loaded Municipal Sludge-Biochar as an Efficient and Stable Catalyst for Biodiesel Production from Vegetable Oil

In this contribution, biochar from municipal sludge was used as a novel matrix for the synthesis of a series of calcium-based heterogeneous catalysts toward biodiesel production. Their catalytic activity was investigated in terms of catalyst loading and calcination temperature during preparation, in addition to the transesterification parameters including the methanol/oil molar ratio, reaction time, and catalyst amount. The highest biodiesel yield up to 93.77% was achieved with the 30Ca/A-SBC-700, and it maintained as high as 84.9% even after 10 cycles of a consecutively alternating catalysis and regeneration process. It was revealed that the porous municipal sludge biochar and autologous SiO2 were accountable for the superior stability of the present catalyst. This work may provide a new path to value-added valorization of sludge waste and also a renewable and efficient catalyst for biodiesel production at a low cost

Patients with Asian-type DEL can safely be transfused using RhD-positive blood

Red blood cells (RBCs) of the Asian-type DEL phenotype express few RhD proteins and are typed as serologic RhD-negative (D-) in routine testing. RhD-positive (D+) RBC transfusion for Asian-type DEL patients has been proposed but has not been generally adopted due to a lack of direct evidence regarding its safety and underlying mechanism. We performed a single-arm multicenter clinical trial to document the outcome of D+ RBC transfusion in Asian-type DEL patients; none of the recipients (0/42; 95% confidence interval, 0%-8.40%) developed alloanti-D after a median follow-up of 226 days. We conducted a large retrospective study to detect alloanti-D immunization in 4,045 serologic D- pregnant women throughout China; alloanti-D was found only in true D- individuals (2.63%, 79/3,009), but not in those with Asian-type DEL (0/1,032). We further retrospectively examined 127 serologic D- pregnant women who had developed alloanti-D and found none with Asian-type DEL (0/127). Finally, we analyzed RHD transcripts from Asian-type DEL erythroblasts and examined antigen epitopes expressed by various RHD transcripts in vitro, finding a low abundance of full-length RHD transcripts (0.18% of the total) expressing RhD antigens carrying the entire repertoire of epitopes, which could explain the immune tolerance against D+ RBCs. Our results provide multiple lines of evidence that individuals with Asian-type DEL cannot produce alloanti-D when exposed to D+ RBCs following transfusion or pregnancy. Therefore, we recommend considering D+ RBC transfusion and discontinuing anti-D prophylaxis in Asian-type DEL patients, including pregnant women. This clinical trial is registered at www.clinicaltrials.gov as NCT03727230